Obama's attack on McCain's healthcare plan is that he will make include insurance benefits as taxable income.  This is accurate and effective, but misleading.  The $5,000 dollar transfer will more than make up for these losses.  This policy is a relatively smart way to address moral hazard.  What will end up happening is that poor people will end up consuming more healthcare and rich people will downsize from the cadillac healthcare plan through what is known in microeconomics as a "substitution effect." 

Never fear liberals, there is plenty left to criticize! Including:

-It will actually fracture risk pools instead of pooling risk broadly as he plans to "promote competition" - this will have an upward pressure on price.
-It will not address the market for health, only the market for health insurance.
-Thus it will not address inflated Doctor's salaries, over-specialization, the shortage of general practice Doctors, inflated drug costs.
-It only transfers wealth and deals with moral hazard, it does not address inflated costs.

Thus the plan assumes the only problem with healthcare in the United States is moral hazard, that we consume too much.  The real problem is cost.  We fix costs by fixing the market for healthcare services and promoting broad risk pooling in health insurance.

This just some good ammunition against conservatives who may be on to the fact that Obama's attack doesn't really hold up when you examine the policy.

There will be an enormous task ahead of the Democrats once/should they assume power in January.  We will be facing a healthy recession with the potential of economic stagnation and growth recession following it.  The financial system will be fixed.  The bailout indicating that policy makers are not afraid of moral hazard on wall street, we will continue to buy up bad debt and inject liquidity until the market stabilizes.  Afterwards, the Democrats will need new and innovative techniques to spur long term economic growth.  Here is how we should do it.

Fix Healthcare and don't let Obama's plan pass.  The biggest threat to our economy today minus the housing crisis is healthcare.  Our healthcare sector far surpasses all other OECD countries in percentage gdp, cost of insurance, and the cost of individual health services.  Obama's plan barely addresses many of the issues that cause this.  We need to pool risk broader, address moral hazard appropriately, regulate health markets and doctors salaries, force doctors to serve as general practice doctors for an extended period of time before specializing, provide litigation protection, prevent insurance companies from spending money on skimming applicants, etc.  Obama's plan does not adequately address many of these issues. 

Trade More Not Less Let's see how republicans like it when its the wealthy having their jobs outsourced.  Make doctors compete with doctors in canada who charge far less, let students overseas take the bar exam and argue cases before court via videophone, let the best professors from foreign universities teach classes here over the internet, make pharmaceutical companies compete with foreign competitors, etc. etc.  Make competition work for all of us, not just the rich.  Provide one time grants to people who lose their jobs overseas to train themselves for a new position.  Simple economics, let the winners compensate the losers, make them invest in their skills to better compete in a global marketplace.

Fix Education Invest invest invest in education.  We need to have the most compelling workforce in the world.  Education is a positive externality, everyone else benefits from you being highly educated.  INVEST in education and we will all be better off.  We need the world's best scientists, engineers, mathmaticians, etc etc.